The Year After I Died

"You were one of the people who fought the Daleks on the Game Station."

Writer: Guy Adams

Format: Audio

Released: June 2017

Series: Lives of Captain Jack 1.01

Featuring: Captain Jack

Synopsis

Captain Jack Harkness – time-travelling con-man, saviour of the Earth, and intergalactic adventurer. He has lived many lives.

Set in the year 200,101, on an Earth ravaged by the Daleks, Jack struggles to save humanity from its oldest enemy.

Verdict

The Year After I Died was a decent story to kick off the first series of The Lives of Captain Jack spinoff. Of course, Captain Jack already stars as the lead character in his own spinoff of Torchwood but it's great to get some inserts of his life, or lives, between his forced departure from travelling with the Ninth Doctor and Rose to becoming a part of Torchwood. It's a really intriguing time for Jack and placing this episode just a year after the events of The Parting of the Ways was a big appeal for me. It's such an interesting time for Jack as a character and it's really clear to see how much he has developed by the time the first series of Torchwood comes around. So filling in some of the gaps for his character is an absolute joy from Big Finish. I have been wanting to get started on this series for a very long time now and I was delighted to pick up all three series in the recent sale from Big Finish. I was kind of expecting a little more from the first episode despite my good rating and I think my initial disappointment was how little of Jack we actually had in the first twenty minutes or so! Silo was a very good character and I liked her relationship with Jack, but I didn't think it worked well for the opening episode of the series to not feature a lot of the main character for the first chunk! Still, his presence was felt with Silo acknowledging that she should have adhered to Jack's warning regarding Trear Station. I liked how Jack was known to Silo from having been on the Game Station and fighting the Daleks and the period in Jack's life here being one where he wanted a quiet life and lived in a cabin was excellent because I just couldn't imagine him settling down and living quietly! The setting of 200,101 was intriguing and hearing of how ravaged the Earth was after the Dalek attacks was brilliant. I really liked the continuity and whilst I think it was very good to explore and it was good to hear things from Jack's quiet perspective, I thought a little more could have occurred regarding the wider Earth and how damaged it was. Attempting to get humans off the home world was also great and the situation was clearly dire with the likes of rations but Jack seemed to be doing well. The Hope Foundation was clearly a sham and I thought Vortia made a pretty decent villain. Her wanting of eyes in the literal sense was not expected and I liked the audacity of literally taking anything she wanted. Humanity was being taken advantage of in the biggest way after being a species and planet in ruins. I feel like one episode for Jack in this time period isn't enough to give it the exploration required, but I really loved the ending with Jack sacrificing himself to put an end to the Trear Station situation and thinking that this was why he was given a second sense. Him describing his revival on the Game Station as blacking out and not realising that he had actually been exterminated was fantastic and I loved how he survived once again here! It was his first taste of realising he might just be immortal and whilst it wasn't clear if he'd accepted that fact yet, it was so much fun to get an early example of this happening. Gorky turned out to be an interesting character, but I wasn't much of a fan of the ending he shared with Vortia. For me, this was all about Jack and whilst I would have wanted more from the time period, this was a good little episode to start the series and see Jack revive for the first time following the Game Station death. 

Rating: 7/10